Ok, dear people, here I go stirring the pot again offering another perspective on things. Since I left my career in journalism 17 years ago I have decidedly stayed out of politics but what is happening in our world right now, and very specifically in my country of birth, has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with the human journey and the important crossroads we are at as a species and a planet.

I admit that I have been a non-participating observer through the whole U.S. election. Because I was unable in good conscience to get behind either candidate, I chose not to vote. Personally, I felt my 5 year old would have been a better option for president than the 2 on offer. So, instead, while living happily on the other side of the planet, I have watched the unfolding of the U.S. election much like a movie. Honestly, if Hollywood had made a movie out of this election cycle (and no doubt they will in the near future) there is no way it could have been as entertaining as the real thing. It’s been part comedy, part horror movie, part bad reality tv. And then this past Wednesday the lights came on in the cinema and most of us soiled our underpants just a little bit.

Now most people are aware that the U.S. president is really just a figure head, a symbol,anddoesn’t actually have as much power as one might think. And perhaps that is at the heart of why so so many are shocked, depressed and feeling hopeless about the outcome. It’s the symbolism of it. It’s the fact that Donald Trump is now reflecting ourselves back to us in the mirror and we are understandably horrified at what we see. “Is THAT what I really look like?! Shit!!”

Half of America and quite a lot of the rest of the world feels that a huge (yuuge) step backwards has been taken when, really, we were all ready for a huge step forward instead. Right? Right…well, here is the thing….Hilary Clinton would not have been that step forward. She appeared to be a symbol for moving forward, just by virtue of being a female, however appearances are just that….appearances. As much as I’d like..love, actually, to see a woman as president someday, she, quite ironically, was a choice for remaining in old energy. And, collectively, humanity has chosen to take that next step in our evolution…collectively we HAVE chosen to go to our next level of being, realising at a soul level that none of our old baggage can be brought with us. And so we entered a challenging but necessary phase of shedding the old. This is where we are now. And collectively, we currently have one foot in each – one in the old, one in the new – which is why things feel so crazy. We are fulfilling the prerequisites required to finally “graduate” to the shiny new paradigm we are so ready for – one where our wounds are healed, our traumas are completely forgiven and we feel the deep connection we have to one another and All That Is.

Believe it or not folks, Mr. Orange seems to be, in fact, the catalyst needed to bring about forgiveness…therefore assisting us, in his own unique misogynistic way, in our frequency shift. Not in the way that a great leader like Nelson Mandela assists in a shift of consciousness, no, no…but in a way that apparently needs to happen for the highest good of all, at this moment in time. Sometimes turning points are disguised as a narcissistic man-child.

He is the symbol of ego/personality, our shadow side. Humanity has been shifting it’s way of operating from an ego based one to a soul based one. The way to light is through the shadow. While some of us have already shifted to a soul based modus operandi, others are still working on it. Now they have been given permission to work out their woundings and traumas openly. Not a pretty sight, I know…and yet it is still better that shit comes out rather than continuing to secretly fester inside for years to come, holding us back from evolving as a species.

I know what you’re thinking….I know, I KNOW, that was my initial reaction too, believe me. Almost the minute Trump was declared winner a heaviness covered the earth like a blanket….the weight of all the emotions floating around in the air, everywhere. He isn’t even president yet and racism, bigotry, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, conflict and hate crimes are being openly played out in America now. You may blame Trump for this but the truth is…no one can make you feel something that isn’t already lying dormant inside you already. All he is doing, as any good catalyst does, is assisting to bring that shit up to the surface from its state of suppression so that it may be expressed and therefore ultimately released and cleared.

Yes, America may plummet into some real darkness for awhile, clearing suppressed trauma is no easy task and I acknowledge that it can really suck. And though this may be easy for me to say while sitting so far away, I do see a tremendous opportunity for light to emerge now. This is not just for America but for the whole world. Please, world….. people of light, grab this opportunity. That horrifying reflection in the mirror, let it motivate. Hopefully we don’t see a crappy reflection and think “Oh, well, I’ll just sit here and wallow in my crappiness”…hopefully we see it, seek to understand it, have compassion towards it, accept it for what it is and then stand up and say “Ok! I’d better first deal with my own inner world, so that my light can shine brighter than ever in the outer world and I can change the reflection coming back.”

“ ‘We don’t usually see things as they really are’, she thought. ‘We see things as we are.’ As she recalled the Law of Creation, which states that everything is within us, Ananya was getting a deeper understanding of what that really meant. ‘Nothing exists outside of ourselves, not even things that we consider to be external, she concluded………’We make all sorts of judgements and assumptions based on what we see. We call a beggar a victim, for example, but we are only seeing one tiny little scene in that soul’s whole movie. If you see only one scene of a movie, have you fully understood what the entire movie is about? One lifetime is like one little scene in a soul’s entire movie. Every soul incarnates with intentions about how they wish to play out this particular scene. So how can we even begin to comprehend what another soul has deemed appropriate for its own evolution in a particular lifetime?

This world we live in contains a thread of appearance and a thread of significance, The thread of appearance covers the thread of significance so it is not always easy to see. The way to understand an event, a situation, a person or a flower for what it truly is – for its wholeness – is to make a commitment to go beyond the appearances of what seems to be. Appearances are but mere starting points to understanding. To stop there is to leave the understanding incomplete.”

-pgs 37-40, Chapter on Law of Completion, The Freedom of Innocence A journey into the heart of All That Is by Lara A. Shah

Go beyond the appearances and perhaps you’ll realise that a great opportunity for empowerment has just been handed to us. It’s what we do with that opportunity that matters…how are you going to respond?